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PhD Fellowship in Astrophysics: From Stellar Nurseries to Rocky Planets | Closing date: 2023-01-25 Contact: La Caixa Fellowships |
A candidate to undertake this project should have a keen interest in fundamental astrophysical processes, a demonstrated aptitude for the development and adoption of numerical codes, and a steadfast motivation to set a new state-of-the-art in the fields of star and planet formation, with seminal and transformational contributions. | ▸ more | Research Project:
What sets the stage for the formation of rocky planets, potential hosts of life in the universe? Planets emerge from dusty gaseous disks around newborn stars within stellar nurseries, clouds of cold interstellar gas containing thousands to millions of solar masses. To understand ab initio the formation and evolution of protoplanetary disks, we need a computational framework that captures the complex environment of star-forming clouds, including the coupling of turbulence, magnetic fields, stellar radiation, gravity and dust dynamics over a vast range of scales.
The project is composed of two parts (from large to small scales):
1) Simulations of star-forming clouds, to achieve a realistic description of initial and boundary conditions for a large number of young stars and their circumstellar disks.
2) Simulations of dust evolution in circumstellar disks, to study the transport and evolution of dust grains, self-consistently coupled with the gas dynamics.
These are challenging multi-scale and multi-physics computational problems, requiring state-of-the-art massively parallel codes and large supercomputing allocations. Our group is uniquely positioned to tackle these problems, because of the early adoption of the exa-scale hydrodynamic code DISPATCH, developed by our collaborators in Copenhagen, and of our proven track record as awardees of very large time allocations in some of the fastest supercomputing systems. We have pioneered the study of star formation, as well as of the dynamics of dust grains, in the context of interstellar-medium turbulence.
This project will be developed in close collaboration with the computational astrophysics group at the University of Copenhagen. The group in Barcelona will be composed by Prof. Padoan and Dr. Pelkonen (and one more postdoc that we are currently recruiting). The main collaborators in Copenhagen will be Prof. Nordlund and Prof. Haugbølle. We will also collaborate with Prof. Pan, at Sun Yat-sen University, China.
Job position description
A candidate to undertake this project should have a keen interest in fundamental astrophysical processes, a demonstrated aptitude for the development and adoption of numerical codes, and a steadfast motivation to set a new state-of-the-art in the fields of star and planet formation, with seminal and transformational contributions.
Though not a strict prerequisite, expertise in hydrodynamics, plasma physics, turbulence theory and interstellar radiative processes is desirable. Expertise in computer-code development would also be beneficial.
The bulk of the code development and some of the numerical simulations needed for this project will be near completion by the starting time of the project. The student may lead the development of specific code modules and/or the set up of numerical simulations as well as the analysis of their results. She/he will also collaborate in the preparation of supercomputing proposals and will be the leading author of at least two publications per year in the second and third year of the project. The student will attend international conferences, workshops and focused schools on computational methods. She/he will spend part of the time with our collaborators at the University of Copenhagen.
Because of the multidisciplinary nature of this project, requiring expertise in interstellar medium physics, star formation, magneto-hydrodynamics and computational methods, the student is expected to interact with different groups at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona and at other research centers. Within our Institute, the student will interact with observational astronomers specialized in the study of star-forming regions and circumstellar disks. Among the international contacts, and besides our collaborators in Copenhagen, the student will also interact with researchers from the University of Helsinki (implementation of radiative transfer codes) and the Max Planck Institute of Munich (chemistry of protoplanetary disks).
More information:
Group leader
Prof. Paolo Padoan ?ppadoan @ icc.ub.edu
Research product / Research group
Prof. Padoan?s personal website
https://www.ub.edu/starformation/
The DISPATCH code website.
https://www.astro.ku.dk/~aake/dispatch/overview/index.html
Website of the Institute of Cosmos Sciences-UB
http://icc.ub.edu/
For more information on the employment conditions, please refer to https://icc.ub.edu/node/21459
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